Facebook reveals full Apple Music integration in Messenger, AR initiative at F8 conference

At Tuesday's keynote speech for Facebook's F8 developer's conference, Facebook announced full Apple Music integration with Messenger is coming soon, plus an assortment of technologies and developer programs intended to boost augmented reality adoption for all users of the social media platform's apps.

As part of a larger initiative to expand Messenger, Facebook's head of the Messenger platform David Marcus said that the Apple Music implementation would be on the platform, with no firm due date. Based on other

Facebook currently allows embeds of Apple Music songs in news feeds. Full integration would allow the song to be played from Messenger itself, without leaving the app or chat., or being shunted to Apple's Music app to hear the song.

Users with subscriptions will be able to play back the full song. Non-subscribers will get the standard preview.

Augmented reality through Facebook

Facebook's augmented reality ambitions will ultimately center around the Stories app that the company released in March. An internal beta program currently underway allows developers to create and utilize photos and pre-built effects to overlay on video and images captured with the Stories app.

Facebook is calling it the "Camera Effects Platform." Six developer partners will build augmented reality for the Stories camera. As features are developed, Facebook will add them as it sees fit.

"The tools today are primitive," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Recode. "And people aren't using primitive tools because they prefer primitive tools. They're using primitive tools because we're still early on the journey to creating better tools."

Zuckerberg also confirmed that the company was working on hardware, and is expecting discrete virtual reality and augmented reality products to emerge.

"I think everyone would basically agree that we do not have the science or technology today to build the AR glasses that we want," Zuckerberg said. "We may in five years, or seven years, or something like that. But we're not likely to be able to deliver the experience that we want right now."